Commercial meat processing facilities often incorporate continuous product-flow blast freezers. Such freezers can incorporate a variety of different types of commercially available refrigerants such as CO2, R22, R404, R507, R134A as well as ammonia.
Environments such as blast freezers where the ambient temperature is below −50° F. for several hours, and then, changes to 120° F. over a period of minutes, impose thermal shocks on gas sensors utilized to sense leaks in the refrigerant system. It is necessary during the warm-up and cool-down phase of a blast freezer to continuously determine if any refrigerant leaks are present.
There is a continuing need to monitor the ambient atmospheres of such freezers in real-time for refrigerant leaks. Preferably such sensors would be usable with more than one refrigerant gas, and, resistant to the thermal shocks of such freezers.